New honorary members of Society of Actuaries in Ireland

The Council of the SAI has announced that it will appoint two new honorary members – former taoiseach (prime minister) Dr Garrett FitzGerald and Professor Phelim Boyle of the University of Waterloo in Canada. This month we briefly profile both men and we hope in a future issue to carry the presentations of their honorary fellowships.

Dr Garrett FitzGerald

Dr FitzGerald is best known to the world for his political career pursued between 1965 and 1992, when he was prime minister on two occasions. Perhaps his greatest achievement was to negotiate the Anglo-Irish agreement with Margaret Thatcher which marked an early step in the political progress of Northern Ireland. He can however also take some of the credit for the first steps in Ireland’s macroeconomic progress from basket case to celtic tiger.

It is less well known that Garrett FitzGerald’s political career in many ways constituted a digression from a lifelong interest in economics and statistics. After a period with Aer Lingus, in which he acquired a reputation as one of the few minds who could cope with the multi-dimensioned problem of optimal air flight scheduling, Dr FitzGerald became a leading economic consultant. He has always displayed a strong interest in issues of international economic development and continues to play an active part in this sphere today.

Dr Phelim Boyle

Dr Boyle is a member of both the Institute of Actuaries and of the Canadian Institute and is an actuary whom your news editor has known and respected for more years than should be mentioned in public! Almost uniquely among actuaries, Phelim Boyle also is known – particularly in north America – as a seminal contributor to the development of financial economics.